Fundly.com is Transforming Online Philanthropic, Political and Individual Giving

Recently, I interviewed Dave Boyce, CEO of Fundly, the world’s largest and most widely-adopted social fundraising platform. Fundly has enabled political campaigns, nonprofits and individual fundraisers of all sizes to raise more than $240 million to-date for their candidates and causes.

Dave Boyce is a serial entrepreneur who lists his favorite start-up as his own family – he is married with six children. A professionally-trained musician and amateur beatboxer, Dave hung up a professional music career to "go legit" (get a Harvard MBA), before helping found a rapid-fire sequence of three start-ups in 1999/2000, the third of which he sold to
Oracle in 2005. His most recent venture, Fundly, is transforming online philanthropic, political and individual giving.

Dave Boyce: In 2009, I ran into a couple of guys who had been building online fundraising platforms for political campaigns. They believed they had stumbled onto an application that would change political fundraising forever, and they needed a CEO who could help attract investors and scale the venture. I was interested in exploring how big the problem was and the size of the opportunity to transform fundraising, even beyond politics.

I have plenty of personal experience with the pain of fundraising. I’m the father of six kids, and every year they come home from school selling wrapping paper or greeting cards or cookie dough. I don't want that stuff, but I buy it anyway to support my kids. We send email appeals and post “asks” on Facebook, and then Grandma, aunts, and other far-flung fans of our kids buy as well – not for the stuff, but for the kids.

Then there’s a flurry of checks in the mail, paper forms, envelopes, thank you notes, school backpacks… the process is a huge nightmare. And at the end of the day, the school gets 40 percent of the proceeds. The other 60 percent goes for the stuff I didn't want in the first place.

With Fundly, we looked hard for an existing fundraising solution that was easy to launch, easy to use and easily integrated into social media. When we didn’t find one, we built one.

Rahim Kanani: How has Fundly evolved ever since, and how do you define success?

Dave Boyce: In 2009 and 2010, we got a lot of traction in political fundraising. In Fall 2010 we re-launched the site as a service for nonprofits and individuals’ causes of all shapes and sizes, and we began getting a flood of customers. It seemed everyone from individuals to volunteer-run groups to established nonprofits was looking for an easy solution to get their social fundraising campaigns up and running quickly and with no upfront cost. We knew we were onto something when school clubs and sports teams, local nonprofits and even scout troops and faith-based organizations were launching their own campaigns on Fundly’s platform and successfully raising money online.

The real endorsement came a few months later when Habitat for Humanity and Teach for America adopted Fundly as their platform for social fundraising system-wide.

Fundly’s goal is to provide best-in-class fundraising tools to all organizations and causes regardless of size or budget. The fact that we have been able to help more than 10,000 organizations of all sizes reach their fundraising goals tells me we are succeeding at this goal.

Rahim Kanani: How would you characterize the current landscape of online giving--what's worked, and what hasn't?

Dave Boyce: Online fundraising in general, and social fundraising in particular, is a very new phenomenon. We are just barely learning the power of this methodology, but one thing is certain – the old ways of measuring success don't apply.

In offline fundraising, every donation is a success. In social fundraising, every donation is both a success and an opportunity. Why?

In offline fundraising, when you get a check that is the beginning and end of the donation. In social fundraising, the donor contributes money, as well as her email address and introductions to her friends. And this is just the beginning of the relationship. She and her friends are now plugged into your cause and primed to receive updates, requests for assistance, and future communications about the fundraising campaign. This multi-faceted donation is worth 10 or 20 or even 100 times more than an offline donation of the same denomination.

So we know that social fundraising is successful, in whatever form and whatever quantity. Any time you can collect a donation through social media you are building for your fundraising future in a sustainable way. The only way to fail is by not putting online social fundraising at the front and center of your fundraising strategies going forward.

Rahim Kanani: As Fundly continues to expand its reach and efforts, what are some of the leadership lessons you've learned along the way?

Dave Boyce: Fundly is a start-up company, with all the ups and downs of any new venture. As we have worked hard to become the leader in this space, I have learned two very important things about leadership:

It's all about the team. Recruiting the right people – people with the right skills and the right attitude and the right stamina – makes all the difference. One excellent person is sometimes worth five pretty good people. To be a successful start-up you have to be uncompromising about the quality of people you attract and recruit.

We can do hard things! In the start-ups I’ve led, I have always reached a point where there was nowhere left to turn. At that point you have two choices – either stop/slow down/falter, OR keep moving ahead, confident that something will break your way. I am always surprised at how often it breaks your way. This very moment is why we don't have more entrepreneurs. It is very, very hard to move forward with confidence when logic and all observable facts tell you that you are on a fool's errand. But if you stick to your game plan, you will be amazed at how much you and a great team can accomplish against the odds.

Rahim Kanani: Why do you think Fundly has been so successful?

Dave Boyce: We put the customer at the center of every decision we make. We constantly ask: "Does this feature help make it easier for the organization? More engaging for the donor?" If it does not pass one or both of these tests, we go back to the drawing board. There is a lot of software out there with powerful features that never get used. And when features exist that never get used, they create negative value, because they distract the user from the things that are important.

Many Fundly users are volunteers with little fundraising experience. If we gave them software that’s overly-complicated or confusing, it would be impossible for them to achieve results. But because we have focused incessantly on simplifying the Fundly user experience, and making every feature fight for its existence, we have developed the easiest-to-use social fundraising platform on the Web. I believe this has been the key to helping our customers raise more than $240 million to date, and we’ve only just begun.